The Macedonian students, together with their long-standing leaders, continue to perform well at all international competitions in informatics. Following the success of the high school students at the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) in Baku earlier this month, when they brought home two bronze medals, Macedonia's continued success at the informatics Olympiads in the past ten years has been extended by the juniors – pupils up to 15.5 years of age.

From the 13th Junior Balkan Olympiad in Informatics (JBOI 2019), held from 23rd to 29th August in Maribor, Slovenia, the Macedonian team, comprised of the competitors Teo Kitanovski, Atina Ruvinova, Ivan Zanov, and Sara Stefanovska, led by the team leaders Mile Jovanov, PhD, and Emil Stankov, MSc, from the Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering (FCSE), has returned with a silver medal. The students from the team were selected through a year-long competition cycle, which is regularly organized by the Computer Society of Macedonia (CSM), and this year was held for the 30th time. The competitions are held through the mendo.mk system which is available all year round to all interested competitors.

Teams of up to four competitors from the following ten Balkan countries participated in this year's Junior Balkan Olympiad in Informatics: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Moldova, Cyprus, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, and Turkey. In this strong competition, the silver medal for Macedonia was won by 14-year-old Teo Kitanovski from Skopje.

Along with JBOI 2019, the 3rd European Junior Olympiad in Informatics (EJOI 2019) also took place in Maribor, Slovenia. The primary purpose of this important and elite educational event is to stimulate the interest in informatics for younger children (up to 15.5 years of age) in all European countries, as well as to enable the best European young talents of this age to showcase the knowledge and skills they have already acquired in this area, and more specifically in programming. Each EJOI country participates with a team consisting of 4 competitors, a leader and a deputy team leader. Students compete in solving algorithmic problems in two competition days.

A total of 90 students from 24 European countries participated in EJOI 2019. The Balkan countries, which simultaneously participated in both parallel events (EJOI 2019 and JBOI 2019), were represented by the same team at each of the events. In this extremely strong competition, besides the silver medal at JBOI 2019, the Macedonian team also won one bronze medal at EJOI 2019. The winner of the medal was, once again, the pupil Teo Kitanovski. This success of our team yet again confirms that young pupils from Macedonia have knowledge with which they can proudly stand shoulder by shoulder with the pupils of their age from all over Europe and beyond.

The next, 14th in a row, Junior Balkan Olympiad in Informatics (JBOI 2020), will be held next year in Nicosia, Cyprus.